A Different Level
First, slide one arm deep under the chin and wrap it around the opponent's neck. As you pull, grab your opposite bicep with your free hand, and that free arm cups the back of the opponent's head. Your body and theirs need to be pressed completely flush. Then, once you're locked in like that, drag the elbow of the choking arm down toward your own side—
Thud!
The memory of the coach tapping out with almost insulting ease rose vividly in my mind. In the video, he'd demonstrated the choke from a seated position, but I was standing right now, arching my back and leaning into it. I was even up on my toes, wrenching the grip with every intention of taking his neck clean off.
The guy couldn't so much as wheeze, let alone groan. I could feel how airtight the grip was—no gaps anywhere. Pankration had a similar technique, so the motion came naturally to me, and before long I'd wrung a frantic tap out of the man who'd been clinging to my arm with both hands.
Thud! Thud-thud!
But I didn't let go. Even then, I was counting seconds in my head.
Five... six.
Right around the six-second mark, his body crumpled like a marionette with its strings cut. I caught him under the armpit and laid him out on the ground.
The sight of him passing out so effortlessly sent shockwaves rippling through the onlookers.
"Holy shit... what the hell is this?"
"Jihwan got knocked out? The Busan guy?"
A laugh slipped out at the exchange between the two lackeys. If anything, they should just call him a Busan fish cake. That was exactly what I was thinking when the temporarily unconscious fool came back around.
"Damn it all..."
The Busan fish cake scrambled to his feet and stared at me.
"...Who the hell are you?"
The eyes that had been glaring at me like he wanted to eat me alive had gone remarkably docile. If you don't know grappling, there's nothing you can do but get manhandled—that's just how it works, so right now he was probably feeling like he'd been possessed by a ghost.
And this was exactly why I'd updated my grappling before my striking.
"That's what I said when I told you we should spar."
I nodded toward the top of the building I'd noticed while locking in the choke. The fish cake followed my gaze, and his expression crumpled beautifully. He bellowed at the top of his lungs.
"Oi! We got an audience!"
Somehow or other, a crowd had heard the commotion and come running—spectators were plastered against the middle school building's windows, peering down at us. A few of them were even filming on their phones. And yet not a single one of those hot-blooded middle-schoolers had dared to raise a peep at the fish cake's roar, which meant he commanded some real respect even among the kids.
"Screw it, should I just beat 'em all down, these little bastards," he muttered under his breath, and then, seeming to calm down a little at last, he looked at me.
"You really a ninth grader? All pretty-faced like that and you're crazy strong. That was jiu-jitsu?"
"I guess?"
"You guess?"
"I don't really know. I just know it comes up a lot in MMA."
"What the hell's that supposed to mean?"
The fish cake pressed on.
"You didn't throw a single strike, kid. You telling me you're not a grappler?"
"I only held back because we're on the street."
"What kinda bull is that."
He asked, "So what, you're saying you went easy on me just now?"
"If you're curious, come spar sometime."
I met his eyes dead-on and gave him a flat, matter-of-fact warning.
"Right now, I could bend every limb you have."
"..."
The fish cake stared at me with a blank expression. He looked caught between his pride and the brutal reality in front of him, but honestly, the answer had already been decided for him.
"You're scary as hell."
He, too, understood that as long as he didn't know my techniques, no amount of trying would end with anything but him eating the mat. Maybe that was why he glanced over the two friends he'd brought along and said:
"Let's go. Stepped in dog shit today."
"For real? We're just leaving?"
"Go. You wanna take him on?"
"Nope."
"A guy who learned his stuff proper, you can't beat him. Unless you got a bat or somethin'... and if I cause another scene, they'll make me quit baseball for good."
Personally, I thought throwing a punch at someone's face out of nowhere on the street was already a crime, but apparently Busan law worked differently. Or maybe this guy just lived in a different world altogether.
Tearing my eyes from the fish cake's receding back, I turned my head. There stood Choi Woo-seok, frozen stiff as a statue, staring blankly into space.
"You wanna die?"
"...Sorry."
Apparently the impact of watching the fish cake get folded had been substantial.
"Next time you bring someone, make sure it's actually a combat sport. At least I'd get practice out of it."
"..."
I walked past the three of them—still too stunned to open their mouths—and headed back to the classroom.
On the way, I could feel the gazes of a few kids who'd watched the whole thing, sneaking glances at me. They still didn't have the nerve to approach, just whispering among themselves, and listening to it gave me the strange feeling of having become... something.
That said.
"What is with everyone being this fast?"
We'd met behind the far corner of the building—how on earth did several dozen people hear the news and sprint over in time to watch?
Still tilting my head in puzzlement, I returned to my seat, and Kang Ji-won beside me asked, "Are you okay?"
"Okay from what?"
"Well..."
She studied my face closely, then quickly looked away.
"Nothing. Just wondered if you got squeezed into a pulp."
"I told you. I said I'd come back after we made peace."
"Right. Guess what I did was for nothing, then."
"What did you do?"
"You might get mad when you find out later, so fair warning—I'm the one who spread the rumor. That they were dragging you off somewhere..."
"You were the culprit?"
"...Yeah."
"Why? Why not tell a teacher?"
"Because if you happened to be winning again, I figured you'd be the only one in trouble."
"Ohhh."
"...?"
She turned her head away and shot me a glare, and I raised my thumb at her.
"You did absolutely amazing. You pass."
"Wh-what... thanks?"
"Thanks to you, I dug a ditch and caught a lobster."
"What are you talking about?"
"The spectators."
"Huh?"
"Some of the kids were filming."
I gave my phone a little tap.
"I could turn this into a whole series, don't you think?"
A high schooler about 183 or 184 centimeters tall, built like a truck, with narrowed, horizontally slit eyes radiating pure menace, swings a wild fist at a delicate-looking middle schooler a good ten centimeters shorter and far slighter of frame. The fist whiffs. The middle schooler dodges the flurry, drags the arm down, takes the back, sinks in a choke. In the blink of an eye, the intimidating high schooler is out cold.
Beneath that, the comments rolled in.
"Haaah..."
Midsummer. He peeled the vinyl hoodie off his head, soaked through with sweat, and the exposed ears—swollen into bloated dumplings, blood pooled and hardened within—came into view. Ji Hyeon-tae tipped his head back, stared up at the night sky, and let out a long sigh before muttering.
"Trash. Every last one of them. They've got some nerve."
Ask anyone to name the strongest teenager in South Korea and they might start listing elite athletes—national team members, Olympians. But the teenager who was the best fighter?
Anyone who followed Korean MMA would name exactly one person, without a moment's hesitation.
The youngest professional debut in the history of Korean MMA. KFC's youngest-ever Featherweight ranker. Holder of the record for the youngest title shot. The current #2 ranked fighter in KFC—Ji Hyeon-tae.
And now some nobody who'd gotten lucky and gone viral online was being hailed as a genius.
So he had decent athletic genes and had clearly trained somewhere—but he'd scraped through a handful of straw men who looked like they couldn't survive a single low kick, and choked out a guy so slow he couldn't even react before getting his back taken. And that made him a genius?
To Ji Hyeon-tae, who had been led into jiu-jitsu by his father—a gym owner—at the age of six and swept trophies at every competition he entered, it was beyond absurd. He'd started kickboxing at twelve, dropped out of high school with the UFC in his sights, gone all-in on this one sport, and clawed his way to where he stood now...
Garbage who showed off half-baked techniques against ordinary people. Street thugs with no business calling themselves fighters, hovering around the fringes of the fight scene in pathetic condition, chasing views with cheap shock content. Every time he saw them, his blood boiled.
That was when one particular comment snagged in his eye.
Ji Hyeon-tae left a reply.
Then he rose to his feet. When he shook out his sleeve, water streamed off the sweat-soaked track suit in rivulets. Before resuming his run, he placed a call to a KFC official.
"Hey, hyung. Could you tell me the dates for that amateur tournament coming up? The one our promotion's running. Yes... someone I know is entering, so... no, no need to worry about it. I'm just going to drop by quietly, I won't say anything. Yes... condition's great. Right, the fight itself won't be affected. Thank you."
The weekend. Today was an important day for my content.
It was the moment I would finally put everything I'd studied through YouTube to the test—not against clueless ordinary people, but against someone actively training in MMA.
Sure, I did full sparring at the gym, but a fight and sparring were fundamentally different animals. Nobody in sparring cuts loose with the actual intent to kill their opponent.
No matter how hard you drill it, practice is still practice.
"You're probably going to blank out the second you step in there. Your opponent might just rush you, too. Still, keep your ears open as much as you can, hold your composure, and move."
Said Coach Baek Jun-gyeong, who had helped me register for the tournament.
And true to his word, most of the fighters going before me were swinging haymaker hooks like it was a bar brawl, or gassing out early and wobbling around the cage.
I'm not doing that.
"Yes, sir."
What would even be the point of all that technical practice if I fought like that?
"Like the coach said, your head's going to go white at first."
Nam-rae, the older fighter who'd come along, helped me strap on my shin guards as he spoke. He'd clearly competed in a lot of amateur tournaments—that seasoned, easygoing vibe could only come from experience. He gave my shoulder a couple of encouraging taps.
"I was losing my mind when I watched you hit that instant submission with the jiu-jitsu you practiced alone in your room. You've got a real eye for this—so don't be nervous. Just fight the way you always do."
Why did this guy seem even more worked up than I was?
"I'll do my best."
I took the mouthguard he handed me and set it between my teeth. The smell of silicone spread through my mouth, and my heart surged.
If my opponent was walking in with intent to end me, that meant I was free to cut the leash, too.
"Next up! Cho Chan-young, versus Shin Yugyeom!"
I rose from my seat. My turn had finally come.